Amazon Location FAQs

Q: What is Amazon Location Service?

Amazon Location Service is a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to add location functionality, such as maps, points of interest, geocoding, routing, asset tracking, and geofences to their applications, without sacrificing data security, user privacy, data quality, or cost.

Q: Why should I use location data in my applications?

Location services are increasingly used in business and consumer applications. You can use location services to display data on top of a map to provide geographic context, determine travel time and distance, look up points of interest, and constrain actions to specific locations. The use of location services enables capabilities such as map-based visualizations, asset tracking, location-based customer engagement, and delivery or ride-sharing applications. Visit the Amazon Location Services Customers page for real world examples.

Q: What can I do with Amazon Location Service?

With Amazon Location Service, you have access to cost-effective location-based services (LBS) using high-quality data from partners, You can easily integrate maps, places, routes, trackers, and geofences capabilities into your applications. Amazon Location Service enables you to bring sophisticated location-enabled applications to production quickly, without the high cost of custom development. Additionally, Amazon Location Service integrates with several AWS services to speed application development.

Q: Where is Amazon Location Service available?

Amazon Location Service is available today in multiple regions around the globe, enabling you to select the closet region to minimize latency. You can find the full list of supported regions in our Developer Guide.

Q: What’s the quickest way to learn the capabilities provided by Amazon Location Service?

The Amazon Location Service console website has interactive tools for quickly experimenting with product capabilities. You can also visit our how-to guides for maps, place, routes, geofences, and trackers in our Developer Guide.

Q: Where can I find examples of supported use case for an industry?

Visit our industry pages to check examples of supported industry use cases.

Q: Where can I find examples of supported use cases for my location data and mapping needs?

Our sub-product overview pages for Places, Routes, Maps, and Geofences and Trackers contain use case examples.

Q: Can I use Amazon Location to geocode a large number of addresses?

Yes. Use the Geocode API operation to convert addresses into geographic coordinates and even collect detailed information about points of interest like hours of operation, business contacts, and more. You can include this Geocode API in ETL pipelines or other batch workloads to convert large quantities or addresses or point of interest information into geographic coordinates.

Q: Can I use Amazon Location Service to optimize a travel itinerary or delivery schedule?

Yes. Use the OptimizeWaypoints API operation to re-order a series of trip destinations or waypoints into the most efficient sequence and get information about expected travel time and distance. Use the CalculateRouteMatrix operation with a multiple origins and multiple destinations to calculate the travel time and distance between every possible pair of origin and destination points, providing you the data you need to optimize even the most complex logistics problem.

Q: What are the default quotas for Amazon Location Service resources?

Amazon Location Service sets usage limits for APIs to help manage service capacity. Most quota limits can be increased if your use case requires it. Learn about the default quota limit values and whether they can be increased in the Service Quotas section of our Developer Guide. Find the quota limits currently applied to your account using the AWS Service Quotas management console.

Q: How can I request an increase in quotas for Amazon Location Service?

Use the AWS Service Quotas management console to request a quota limit increase. Limit increase requests up to 2X the default limit will be automatically approved, while requests above this threshold will create a support ticket. For urgent assistance, contact your premium support team.

Q: Are there additional costs associated with requesting higher quotas for Amazon Location Service?

There are no direct charges for quota increase requests, but higher usage levels may lead to increased service costs based on the additional resources consumed.

Q: How can you monitor Amazon Location Service?

Using Amazon CloudWatch, you can monitor your metrics on service usage and health, including requests, latency, and faults, so you don’t have to build your own health monitoring tools. Amazon Location Service is integrated with AWS CloudTrail for logging and continuously monitoring your account activity. You can learn about more in CloudWatch and CloudTrail section. In addition, you can use tags to help manage, identify, organize, search for, and filter your Amazon Location Service resources in one view. You can create tags to categorize resources by purpose, owner, environment, or billing relationships. You can learn about more in Manage resources with Tags section of our Developer Guide.

Q: How can I see an example of Amazon Location in a functioning application?

Amazon Location Service has numerous GitHub samples and examples showcasing different capabilities. We also have a demonstration app available on web, iOS and Android that illustrates several core capabilities of the service. You can find links to all of these in our Demo, Sample and more section of our Developer Guide.

Q: How can I integrate Amazon Location into my new or existing application?

Amazon Location Service has several SDKs to allow you to quickly start using Amazon Location Services. We have both server and client side SDKs (for web, iOS or Android) that provide easy access to our APIs as well as enhanced client-side functionality to simplify and optimize common application needs. You can learn about all of our available SDKs in the SDK Section of our Developer Guide.

Q: How can I use AWS CLI for Amazon Location Service?

Amazon Location Service is supported by AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), a unified tool for you to download, configure, and control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts. 

Q: What are my options for access control?

You can use AWS IAM to manage access to the Amazon Location Service Console, APIs, and resources, including trackers, geofence collections, and API keys. API keys are an Amazon Location specific authentication mechanism enabled for Maps, Places, and Routes. In general, IAM is more aligned with backend service use cases and API keys are more aligned with web and mobile usage. API keys enable direct calls from web and mobile applications and allow improved performance from increased edge caching. Combining IAM with Amazon Cognito provides another useful option for web and mobile usage for all APIs including for Trackers and Geofences. You can also bring your own authentication stack and use it along with Cognito without the need to duplicate user identities.

Amazon Location Service also integrates with AWS Key Management Service (KMS), enabling the use of your existing keys to encrypt your tracking and geofencing data.

To learn more, please visit the Authentication section of our Developer Guide.

Q: How does Amazon Location Service use the data in my requests?

Amazon Location Service does not store or use your data for purposes other than processing your requests. Your data is always anonymized and encrypted, and will not be used for analytics, advertising, or improving AWS services.
Maintaining customer trust is an ongoing commitment. We strive to inform you of the privacy and data security policies, practices, and technologies we’ve put in place. Visit our AWS Data & Privacy page for more information about our data and privacy commitments. All AWS Services, including Amazon Location Service, are European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ready. Visit our AWS GDPR Center for more information. For additional information, see our Service Terms.

Q: Is my request fulfilled by AWS?

We leverage data providers to fulfil Maps, Places, and Routes requests. Amazon Location Service anonymizes requests to our providers by only including the parameters necessary to process the request. All data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and is only decrypted for processing. Also, Amazon Location Service data providers are not permitted to store or use your content for purposes other than processing your requests. The security of Amazon Location Service third-party providers is periodically audited to ensure standards of network security, access control, data protection, and physical security are met. Requests sent to Tracking and Geofencing are processed by AWS. Visit our Data Attribution page for more information on our data providers.

Q: How am I charged for using Amazon Location Service?

Amazon Location Service requires no up-front commitment, and no minimum fee. You are only charged for what you use. Amazon Location Service offers a free trial for the first three months of usage (usage quota apply). Location data is billed based on each request your application makes to the service. Beyond the Amazon Location Service free trial you pay for the requests your application makes to the service. For more information on pricing, please visit Amazon Location Service pricing page.

Q: How I can check the unit price for an API?

Each API may offer multiple features at different price points, and the price may vary based on features you requested through request parameters. For example, for CalculateRoute, you will be charged at Core price bucket when use Car, Pedestrian, or Truck mode, you will be charged at Advanced price bucket when use other travel modes such as Scooter mode, and you will be charged at Premium price bucket when you request for Toll Cost calculation. The specific pricing bucket you will be charged for will be returned in the PricingBucket response field. To check the pricing for each API and features, please refer to pricing page. For details on API feature, request parameters, and corresponding pricing buckets, please refer to pricing model page of our developer guide.

Q: How I can request a discount for high volumes of usage?

Volume discounts are available for customers with a monthly usage exceeding $5,000. For more info Contact us.

Q: How does Amazon Location Service integrate with other AWS services?

Amazon Location Service is integrated with AWS CloudFormation, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon EventBridge, AWS IOT, Service Quota, Amazon Cognito, and AWS IAM. This comprehensive AWS integration enables faster development cycles, operational visibility, and adherence to security best practices. You can learn about these integration in integration with AWS service of our Developer Guide.

Q: Can I use AWS CloudFormation with Amazon Location Service?

Yes. With AWS CloudFormation, you can create templates with Amazon Location Service to consistently and quickly provision resources. You can learn about more in CloudFormation section of our Developer Guide.

Q: Can I use Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail to monitor Amazon Location Service?

Yes. Using Amazon CloudWatch you can monitor your metrics on service usage and health, including requests, latency, and faults, so you don’t have to build your own health monitoring tools. Amazon Location Service is integrated with AWS CloudTrail for logging and continuously monitoring your account activity. You can learn about more in CloudWatch and CloudTrail section of our Developer Guide.

Q: Can I use Amazon EventBridge to respond to Geofences event such as exit and enter?

Yes. Integration with Amazon EventBridge enables an event-driven application architecture so you can use AWS Lambda functions to respond to events, such as a tracked asset entering or exiting a geofence. You can learn about more in How to react to Geofence events (Entry and Exit) using Amazon EventBridge section of our Developer Guide.

Q: Can I use Tags to manage Amazon Location Service?

Yes. In addition, you can use tags to help manage, identify, organize, search for, and filter your Amazon Location Service resources in one view. You can create tags to categorize resources by purpose, owner, environment, or billing relationships. You can learn about more in Manage resources with Tags section of our Developer Guide.

Q: What is the precision supported by Amazon Location Service?

Amazon Location Service accepts location data up to six decimal places of precision (0.000001), which equals to approximately 11 cm or 4.4 inches at the equator. When you use the tracking capability, you can send location updates to Amazon Location Service Trackers that contain up to six decimal places. When you use the geofencing capability, the smallest geofence must have at least 3 vertices of 11 cm or 4.4 inches each, covering an area of 0.05 square meters or 77 square inches. In most applications, however, the limiting factor is the precision and accuracy of physical devices in calculating their GPS positions. We recommend that you determine the accuracy of your application with a proof of concept and use geofences larger than 1,000 square meters or 10,000 square feet, unless you are using specialized positioning equipment.

Q: Which output format does Amazon Location Service Maps support?

Amazon Location Service Maps provides map style information in the popular open-source MapLibre Style Specification (MSS) format, map style that work best for your application and switch between them while using Amazon Location Service.